Making New Ghettos Out South

Block-by-block racial turnover, that ugly and destructive process associated with city neighborhoods, has been spreading to the suburbs.

Not all the suburbs, of course.

Mostly it's happening in Chicago's southern suburbs, several of which have undergone dramatic racial change in the past two decades.

One might reasonably ask what the federal government is doing to fight the trend. It would be reasonable to ask, but a bit naive.

Turns out that Washington, with the help of local public housing agencies, has been fanning the flames of resegregation out south.

The latest evidence is contained in a study of the government's Section 8 rental assistance program. Professor Paul Fischer of Lake Forest College, in a survey funded by the MacArthur Foundation, found that 70 percent of all federal rent subsidies dispensed by the Housing Authority of Cook County (HACC) are funneled into a handful of southern suburbs.

These include the same towns-Harvey, Chicago Heights, Markham, Riverdale, Dolton-that are undergoing the most painful racial change.

An irony here is that Section 8 was supposed to help low-income families escape segregated neighborhoods. In reality, the program is helping create new ghettos in the few suburbs where blacks find it easy, or even possible, to rent apartments.

There's plenty of blame to go around. Cook County, by taking a "hands off" attitude about where subsidy-holders choose to live, is ducking responsibility for a debacle-in-the-making. Then there are the 100-plus area suburbs that have no significant African-American presence. It's all done very subtly-with large-lot zoning, high rents and no open-housing effort-but it's effective and it puts enormous pressure on those suburbs that do welcome blacks.

Ultimate responsibility falls on Congress and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which fund the program and set the rules. HUD needs to set limits on the number of rent subsidies going to any one census tract. It should also force HACC to better counsel Section 8 families about where they might go with their subsidies. An excellent program has been developed by the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, which helps subsidized families find apartments all across the region (but not in predominantly black suburbs) under the court-ordered "Gautreaux" program.

More difficult will be breaking down the invisible barriers that permit so many suburbs to dodge the issue altogether. That will take time.

The funneling of rent subsidies into the same few suburbs, however, should be ended in a hurry.